Colonial Park Putting Course

Colonial Park Putting Course   156 Mettlers Road, Somerset, NJ 08873

We began our weekend journey with Colonial Park Putting Course, which sits inside the over 600 acres that is Colonial Park in Somerset. Just driving in to the park was a beautiful, and we appreciated this addition to a beautiful gathering place.

This course has all the elements of a great park course, and could have had the ability to get up in our rankings like Village Greens or Pine Creek. However, some oddities in this course brought our rating down. We will say there was a storm in the area the day before, but some of this damage looked like it had either been there for a while or was a result of longer wear and tear.

Like other park courses, Colonial Park boasts longer fairways up to 70 feet, with challenging dog legs and several rock traps and water obstacles. However, the course looked like it wasn’t really being cared for; initially, we wouldn’t have thought much of it, but the conditions at other park courses have been so pristine that we were a bit disappointed with Colonial Park. Some holes just needed to have a leaf blower clean off some tree debris. Others are in real need of of just replacement given the amount of wear and water damage. It was passable until we got to the 18th hole which had severe mud damage that stained our ball.

Another oddity was that the size of the cups were about double what a normal cup size is. This made several of our shorter putts much easier than they should have been.

The other factors here (the difficulty, the price, and the beautiful park surroundings) are what save this course. The price is $9/adult, but only $6/senior, which made for a cheap outing for this kind of course. Par for the course was 52, and our winner came in at 49, and that was with an unfortunate 6 on one hole, so room for improvement.

Overall, we think that some resurfacing and technical improvements could really elevate this to a top-tier course.